I’m reminded of a post, which I cannot find, Paul (@ppedrazzi) wrote many years ago about how easily a young child, possibly one of his daughters, picked up and used an iPhone. This was in 2008 or 2009, early days for the iPhone, and the child was probably two, maybe three, years old. Wish I could find that post.

From what I recall, Paul mused on how natural touch was as an input mechanism for humans, as displayed by how a child could easily pick up and use an iPhone. I’ve seen the same with my daughter, who has been using iOS on one device or another since she was much younger.

I’m observing that speech as equally natural to her.

Kids provide great anecdotal research for me because they’re not biased by what they already know about technology.

When I use something like gesture or voice control, I can’t help but compare it to what I know already, i.e. keyboard, mouse, which colors my impressions.

Watching kids use touch and voice input, the interactions seem very natural.

This is obvious stuff that’s been known forever, but it took how long for someone, Apple, to get touch right? Voice is in an earlier phase, advancing, but not completely natural.

One point Noel (@noelportugal) makes about about voice input is that having a wake word is awkward, i.e. “Alexa” or “OK Google,” but given privacy concerns, this is the best solution for the moment. Noel wants to customize that wake word, but that’s only incrementally better.

When commanding the Amazon Echo, it’s not very natural to say “Alexa” and pause to ensure she’s listening. My daughter tends to blurt out a full sentence without the pause, “Alexa tell us a joke” which sometimes works.

Amazon is expanding its voice investment too, providing Alexa as a service, VaaS or AVS as they call it.

I fully believe the not-so-distant future will feature touch and speech, and maybe gestures, at the glance and scan layers of interaction, with the old school keyboard and mouse for heavy duty commit interactions.

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At a 6th grader birthday party Alexa failed miserably to Siri by not having a smart answer to “what is zero divided by zero” question. Still, my kids find Alexa to be a useful speaker that just needs to learn about life. They treat her as a puppy. I wish she grows into Google Voice or SoundHound one day. We also find ourselves calling for Alexa in a car, out of habit.